Two of Marilyn Monroe’s husbands were famous: baseball player Joe Di Maggio, and playwright Arthur Miller.

Her lipstick was bright red and her dress didn’t leave much to the imagination, as if she were trying to look like Marilyn Monroe on the recent cover of Life magazine, beauty mark and all, one she didn’t have when she was making pancakes for the kids at Janet.

Judy Blume -- In the Unlikely Event

I said, "Where would Marilyn Monroe have been if Mrs. Monroe had said, ’No, Marilyn, you’ll ruin your hair’?"

Louise Rennison -- Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

), about The Misfits, which we’d just watched on TV with Hobie, about Marilyn Monroe, whom we both loved ("a little springtime ghost") and about poor ruined Montgomery Clift walking around with handfuls of loose pills in his pockets (a detail I hadn’t known, and didn’t comment upon) and about the death of Clark Gable and how horribly guilty Marilyn had felt for it, how responsible—which somehow, oddly, spiraled into talk of Fate, and the occult, and fortune-telling: did birthdays have…

Donna Tartt -- The Goldfinch

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The back door opens and there stands Miss Marilyn Monroe.

Kathryn Stockett -- The Help

When he spoke of diamonds I naturally thought of Marilyn Monroe in her long gloves and pursey lips whispering "Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend."

Barbara Kingsolver -- The Poisonwood Bible

A blonde who resembled Marilyn Monroe was kneading him with suntan oil, and his lazy, beringed hand reached for a tumbler of iced orange juice.

Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood

I couldn’t get it up over old frozen face in there even if she had the beauty of Marilyn Monroe.

Ken Kesey -- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

If I were to show you a picture of Marilyn Monroe or Albert Einstein, you’d recognize both faces in a fraction of a second.

Malcolm Gladwell -- Blink

It started out with famous people: Wonder Woman, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe… .

Sandra Cisneros -- The House on Mango Street

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"What Daddy means is that people used to like to go to the movies and see Marilyn Monroe," Wendy said, "but they might not like to go to see Marilyn Miller."

Stephen King -- The Shining

(Marilyn Monroe’s death was followed by a temporary 12 percent increase in the national suicide rate.) Then Phillips repeated his experiment with traffic accidents.

Malcolm Gladwell -- The Tipping Point

The young girl who will become Marilyn Monroe, sweating away in a defense plant.

James Bradley -- Flags of Our Fathers

Featuring J. Carroll Naish, Keith Andes and the early Marilyn Monroe.

Don DeLillo -- White Noise

He glinted his eyes enticingly at some jazzy-looking blond lady—Marilyn Monroe, or somebody—lounging on a billowy couch.

Victor Martinez -- Parrot in the Oven

But hadn’t Marilyn Monroe been a size fourteen?

Jodi Picoult -- Change of Heart

Ashley went as Cleopatra, Sumner as a mad scientist, and Laurel Adams as Marilyn Monroe in a peroxide wig and a dress that I could tell my mother thought was entirely too tight.

Sarah Dessen -- That Summer

Lots of people draw on their faces, Marilyn Monroe did, for example.

Jill McCorkle -- Ferris Beach

Indeed, she speaks with the same breathy, almost childlike voice of actress Marilyn Monroe.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

Marilyn Monroe.

David Almond -- Clay

You remember the Marilyn Monroe calendar you saw in my studio.

Don DeLillo -- Underworld

And of course, it didn’t help any when Benjamin threw in his two cents, saying that I looked like Marilyn Monroe (I mean, how does he even know who Marilyn Monroe is, or was?).

Melody Carlson -- Becoming Me

JFK has cultivated a relationship with her for almost two years and is quite certain that tonight Marilyn Monroe is finally his for the taking.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

So giddy, in fact, that it doesn’t even bother him that the president will be rendezvousing with Sinatra’s former girlfriend, Marilyn Monroe.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

Marilyn Monroe is already by the president’s side.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

And of course, it didn’t help any when Benjamin threw in his two cents, saying that I looked like Marilyn Monroe (I mean, how does he even know who Marilyn Monroe is, or was?).

Melody Carlson -- Becoming Me

Now Marilyn Monroe wears a loose robe as the party swirls at the Crosby estate.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

"Marilyn Monroe is a soldier," she later tells her therapist, speaking in the third person.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

Yet despite her passion and beauty, Marilyn Monroe is damaged goods.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

Marilyn Monroe has become so obsessed with JFK that she calls the White House constantly, but her singing performance falls on deaf ears.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

After spending much of her youth in foster homes, she began modeling in her teens and landed a movie contract in 1946, changing her name to Marilyn Monroe.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

But when I looked at Anatole’s wrinkled brown knuckles and pinkish palms, I pictured hands like those digging diamonds out of the Congo dirt and got to thinking, Gee, does Marilyn Monroe even know where they come from?

Barbara Kingsolver -- The Poisonwood Bible

Two months after their weekend in Palm Springs, Marilyn Monroe stands before a dazzled crowd in New York’s Madison Square Garden, singing the traditional birthday song in the most salacious manner possible.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

He showed them some rooms where a lady named Marilyn Monroe once stayed when she was married to a man named Arthur Miller (Danny got a vague understanding that Marilyn and Arthur had gotten a DIVORCE not long after they were in the Overlook Hotel).

Stephen King -- The Shining

If you wrote a paragraph on Marilyn Monroe’s face, without telling me whom you were writing about, could I guess who it was?

Malcolm Gladwell -- Blink

If I were to show you a picture of Marilyn Monroe or Albert Einstein, you’d recognize both faces in a fraction of a second.

Malcolm Gladwell -- Blink

There was a Marilyn Monroe calendar on the wall, the famous early pinup called Miss Golden Dreams, a high-angle shot of the nude body posed on a velveteen blood-red bedsheet.

Don DeLillo -- Underworld

If you wrote a paragraph on Marilyn Monroe’s face, without telling me whom you were writing about, could I guess who it was?

Malcolm Gladwell -- Blink

Marilyn Monroe lies naked facedown on her bed.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

However, their plans went awry when Bobby was tipped off by anonymous sources that Marilyn Monroe had unexpectedly died.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

The facts are that Marilyn Monroe phoned Bobby several times throughout the summer of 1962.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

The damage would go far beyond the innuendos Marilyn Monroe spread around Hollywood before her untimely death.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

Any involvement by Bobby Kennedy in Marilyn Monroe’s death, whether it was suicide or murder, makes it a conspiracy theory without substance to this day.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

Butterbatch or Marilyn Monroe?

Kathryn Stockett -- The Help

Even more startling is the case of five-year-old Patti Weaver who has made convincing claims to Dr. Chatterjee that in her previous-life experience she was the secret KGB assassin responsible for the unsolved murders of famed personalities Howard Hughes, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.

Don DeLillo -- White Noise

Among them was that Marilyn Monroe had had an affair with Bobby Kennedy as well as JFK, and that Bobby was complicit in Monroe’s death.

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard -- Killing Kennedy

A good summary of that paper — and the statistic about Marilyn Monroe — can be found at the beginning of his paper on traffic accidents, David P. Phillips, "Suicide, Motor Vehicle Fatalities, and the Man Media: Evidence toward a Theory of Suggestion," American Journal of Sociology (1979), vol.